Suburban
sprawl is among the most important urban policy issues facing
contemporary cities. Sprawl is a relatively recent phenomenon, brushing
over the landscape with unprecedented rates of growth; a well-accepted
rationale for explaining—and managing—its causes have not yet been
settled upon. Our contention, here, is that geography is instrumental
to consideration of sprawl and that geographical explanations offer
much potential in informing the debate about sprawl. Similarly, spatial
simulation could support sprawl-related research, offering what-if
experimentation environments for exploring issues relating to the
phenomenon. Sprawling cities may be considered as complex adaptive
systems and this warrants use of methodology that can accommodate the
space-time dynamics of many interacting entities.

Automata
tools are well-suited to representation of such systems, but could be
better formulated to capture the uniquely geographical traits of
phenomena such as sprawl. By means of illustrating this point, the
development of a model for simulating the geographic dynamics of
suburban sprawl is explored. The model is formulated using geographic automata
and is used to develop three sprawl simulations. The implications of
those applications are discussed in the context of exploring geographic
explanations of sprawl formation and potential for managing sprawl by
geographic means. These efforts are related to our work on simulating sprawl, modeling residential mobility, and simulating gentrification dynamics.

Demonstrations

Simulating urban growth (you will need the Adobe Flash Player plug-in for your browser to view this movie)

Support

Torrens, P.M. (2000-2004) “Sprawlsim”. UK Economic and Social Research Council (Postgraduate Studentship)